Thanksgiving Forum
Happy Thanksgiving from OTB!
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, November 24, 2022
·
40 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it, and Happy Thursday to the rest!
Blech.
OK, I guess I’ll be the first to ask – where’s our beloved, ritual WKRP Thanksgiving day drop?!
5am here in Milwaukee, high of 50 today, looking like a great day on tap. Happy Thanksgiving to the OTB community, don’t post much but really enjoy my daily perusal on this site. Have a good one!
I’m grateful for the OTB crowd that has educated and entertained me for more than a decade. I hope you are all as healthy and happy as can be reasonably expected!
Gotta admit, the 5K Turkey Trot seemed like a great idea when I agreed a couple of weeks ago during unseasonably warm weather. Just checked and it’s 33 degrees outside (1 degree for the Celsius crowd). This bed I’m about to roll out of is awfully warm.
Today in animal news:
X-ray discovers cat trapped inside checked bag at New York’s JFK airport
Something tells me the cat was none too grateful. Probably said something along the lines of, “About damn time!”
Alaska firefighters rescue baby moose trapped in home
A 500 lb “baby.”
@MarkedMan: As my old man always said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Kanye West claimed on Twitter that he visited Mar-a-Lago and asked Trump to be his running mate in 2024.
Words fail me.
I suspect that one of the things people here are most thankful for this year is something they are less likely to say out loud at their Thanksgiving family gathering.
Ummmm… No. Just no.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I forget which Mass. town it was, but we had an incident a few years ago in which the wild turkeys took over a school bus stop and drove off the little kids, chasing them and pecking at them.
Happy Turkey day to all of you, and that includes you, @OzarkHillbilly:
Oldest cooked leftovers ever found suggest Neanderthals were foodies
@Sleeping Dog: “In the road of life, holidays are potholes.” I don’t remember who it was that said it, but it always rang true to me.
Happy Thankyou Day, one and all.
Meanwhile in the UK, our Turkeys remain in happy ignorance for a couple more weeks.
There’s a light rain here, but very mild. The lake is misty and the geese are quiet. I’ve got the breakfast casserole in the oven, hot coffee in the percolator (old-school). Maybe we’ll have a fire later, to ward off the damp.
So far, so good on this day of counting one’s blessings!
Chilly and windy right now. Just about 60% of our municipal utility’s current electricity supply is wind and hydro power. Might jump to 65% when the sun pops up over the clouds in a bit.
When I say “there are other countries in the world,” I mean even the manifest destiny all-mighty USA can watch and learn from others.
For instance, in Brazil a judge not only rejected a bad faith election challenge, but fined the participants for their trouble as well.
This is not to mean that election results can’t be challenged. But if they are, the challenger must present real, existing, and substantive evidence, not merely make claims and invoke vague conspiracy theories backed up by rage and wishful thinking. And if you don’t have it, or it doesn’t even exist, then there will be consequences for wasting the court’s time.
@Kathy: Well, the maga election deniers had their cases thrown out of court 64 times for lack of evidence and iirc Giuliani and Powell are in danger of being disbarred for their shenanigans..
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
I’m here thinking I should have brought some edibles or like a half a tab of acid. Nothing disruptive mind you, just enough to get twitchy and make everyone else incomprehensible.
@Kylopod:
“Hey everyone! Let us toast to my up-coming penis amputation! Huzzah!! One unit!! Huzzah!!” [half of Lillydale, MN drops dead]
Marjorie Taylor Greene celebrated her reinstatement to Twitter by asking her followers to give her $700,000 to pay her legal bill.
If you wish to donate, you may go here: http://www.MTGforAmerica.com
Is everybody eating?
To wrap up his Revolutions podcast, Mike Duncan is doing several appendices with observations, notes, and generalizations of the various revolutions he’s covered over the years. How and why revolutions happen, how they tend to develop, what forces tend to oppose them, why there tend to be several waves, etc.
This si not a rigorous academic study, but he’s made several good points. There have been nine so far, and at least one more is coming. I plan to re-listen to all of them together when he’s done.
@CSK:
I’m working.
My guess is everyone is cooking, or watching the Bills and Lions.
@CSK: Just got done with prep and everything is cooking away in the oven. My Mom’s not feeling too well, so I’m doing most of it here to take over there.
Honestly, I’m hiding. My brother and his family are here and I spend as little time as possible around them. I’m the heathen of the family, it’s always really awkward. 😛
@Kathy: Ghana versus Portugal
@CSK: Not yet, but it’s not even noon here. Soda bread’s in the oven though.
Question: Is it a regional custom to have Thanksgiving dinner at noon rather than in the evening? I’ve never been to one that wasn’t held in the evening. I’m from the northeast.
@CSK: My family had it in the evening when I was growing up but at some point it moved to mid-afternoon. Then, when Ma got to the point where she just didn’t feel like doing all that work, they dropped it all together in favor of eating at a restaurant.
@CSK: We usually have ours about 2 pm. But we have deviled eggs, a veggie tray and shrimp to graze on beforehand.
@OzarkHillbilly: @Jax:
Thanks. I was just curious.
If you need a laugh:
Mike Lindell will challenge Ronna McDaniel for the chair of the RNC, but only if God wills it.
@CSK: I don’t know about regional traditions related to early TG dinner, but in our family, the dinner was early because either my dad or my uncle had a 3 or so hour drive back home and didn’t want to travel after dark on those famous blue highways of the memoir of the same name.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, that sounds like a sensible precaution rather than a custom.
@CSK:
I always have had Thanksgiving dinner in the evening. Midwest friends would eat early afternoon.
Today Elon looked around the web and said “Oh, it’s you. What are you so thankful about?” And then went and did this.
I may reconsider joining Twitter again if 1) it still exists some time from now and 2) Elon is banned for life (naturally after someone takes the company off his hands).
@CSK: I screwed my whole family up by having the Turkey and stuffing done just before the requested time, 4:00pm
@CSK:
Like others above, we always went for mid-afternoon. Today was aiming for 3 PM, but our hostess was running a little behind on the turkey and we ended up starting about 3:45. Nibbles beforehand starting about noon, but the main event in mid-late afternoon. Since none of us eat like we used to, dessert was a separate seating a bit later, rather than sheer continuous gluttony.
This was my brother’s in-laws’ event: roasted turkey, stuffing, gravy sweet potatoes, glazed carrots, green beans (token non-brown food), mashed potatoes and home-made egg noodles in broth from my mother (our family tradition), smoked turkey breast from my brother, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce straight from the can. Three different wines.
The dinner rolls were superfluous, IMHO.
@MarkedMan: Well, you did better than me. As I stated previously, my Mom’s not been….”feeling good”. I was up til midnight last night prepping everything so all I had to do this morning was add final seasonings and slide them in the oven either at my house or my Mom’s. Figured she was probably good to at least keep an eye on them.
1:40 PM my Mom calls me and says she can’t find the stuffing. What the actual fuck, man, I mixed it all together and put it in the pan and loaded it my own damn self into the back of the buggy to be taken over to my Mom’s to cook in the oven at 11?!
Panicked calls, panicked calls, can’t find the stuffing.
I go over there, and the stuffing is happily cooking away in my Mom’s oven.
Siiiiigh. 😛 😛